TUSCARAWAS ADVOCATE- August 8, 1901 – An Exciting Time

The visitors at Bass Island last Sunday experienced an exciting five minutes about 4:45 o’clock in the afternoon. There was a big crowd at the Island and when the The Great Eastern Band started to leave many of the throng wanted to go with them. When the boats were drawn up at the landing everybody started to get on at once. The two boats were lashed together side by side, the smaller boat doing the propelling on account of disabled paddles on the larger boat. The crowd surged over the smaller boat and sought seats or a place to stand in the bow of the larger boat. The unevenly divided load forced the nose of the boat deep into the water which commenced to run into an open seam. This was not noticed until the boats had started out into the river. In a short time the water commenced to run through the floor of the boat and a minature panic occurred. Men commenced to scramble into the smaller boat and there was danger of overlaoding it. The boats were run back to the landing quickly and almost everybody got out, some of them having very wet feet. An investigation disclosed the cause of trouble and the larger boat was withdrawn from service. It was a big task for the smaller boat to haul all of the people to the Stillwater bridge but it was accomplished in a few hours and no one suffered from it. The owners of the boat that caused the excitement say that the load that was put on Sunday afternoon was the heaviest of the seaon and that if the crowd had been more evenly divided fore and aft the boat would not have been forced deep enough in the water to reach the open seam. They regret the mishap very much and have taken steps to prevent anything of the kinds ever happening again.